Sir Robert Dudley

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Stephensonia

Dudley's New England mapsClaimed he had secret knowledge to determine longitude; Maybe methodology learnt by Enoch Root. The map of Boston harbor is likely based upon his work

Authored entries

Stephenson:Neal:Quicksilver:3:October 12, 1713, 10:33:52 A.M. (Alan Sinder)

Community entry: Sir Robert Dudley

Sir Robert Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, was a swashbuckling chancer who lived two lives, the first English, the second Italian. His chameleon career ranged from Elizabethan privateer, explorer and courtier to Stuart expatriate, religious renegade, shipbuilder, architect, inventor, engineer, cartographer and paterfamilias.

Unable to put his theories on naval architecture into practice, or to employ his seafaring and navigational skills in voyages of discovery, Dudley set about recording his nautical knowledge in a three-volume manuscript between 1610 and 1620. After the plague carried off his wife Elizabeth in 1631, the semi-retired nobleman refined, expanded and incorporated his earlier work into his Sei Libri Dell' Arcano del Mare (Six Books of the Secret of the Sea), which he published himself in 1646-47. The greatest value of these volumes is their numerous engraved plates, which illustrate all kinds of nautical, astrological and mathematical instruments, diagrams explaining navigation, plans for building thirty-four classes of ships, designs for port fortifications and, most importantly, some 127 maps and charts, some embellished with portolani, or sailing instructions regarding winds, currants, tides and prevalent weather phenomena.

Many of the instruments are of Dudley's own invention for finding longitude, which he described as the secret of navigation on the high seas. Dudley also thoroughly described the Principle of Great Circle Sailing, and although this was not wholly his discovery, he included many significant improvements of his own. Some time after publication of what the author called his magnum opus, Dudley wrote an unpublished addendum entitled Direttorio Marittimo (Maritime Directory) intended as a manual for officers of the Tuscan Navy. Dudley's treatises remain a magnificent chapter in the Age of Discovery.
Sir Robert - Polymath

As Dudley approached the end of his life, he was reminded of his wife Lady Alice, still living on in England. Her relatives, supporters of Charles I during the new monarch's bitter struggle with Parliament, petitioned him to review the sentences against Dudley for the sake of their wronged kinswoman and her by then middle-aged children. Charles obliged and, surprisingly, partially reversed the verdicts saying,

whereas our dear Father James I not knowing the truth of the lawful birth of the aforesaid Sir Robert Dudley (as we piously believe) granted away the rifles of the aforesaid Earldoms to others, which we now hold fit not to call in question, nor ravel into our deceased Father's actions.... And yet we, having a very deep sense of the great injuries done to the aforesaid Robert Dudley and Lady Alice Dudley and their children, are of the opinion that in justice and equity these possessions taken from them do rightly belong to them ...

These words, taken from a special patent of 1644 granting Lady Alice the hollow title of duchess, effectively recognised Robert Dudley's legitimate birth seventy years after the fact. Justice delayed was truly justice denied, since Charles restored neither Dudley's lands nor titles. By then the Duke of Northumberland, had been living the life of a well-respected Italian gentleman for almost forty years, very likely cared little. Robert Dudley died five years later on September 6th, 1649, aged 75, a few kilometres outside Florence in the tranquility of his Villa Rinieri, the gift of a grateful Medici dynasty.

The 1911 Encyclopedia entry

DUDLEY, SIR ROBERT (1573-1649), titular duke of Northumberland and earl of Warwick, English explorer, engineer and author, was the son of Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, the favorite of Queen Elizabeth. His mother was Lady Douglas Sheffield, daughter of Thomas, first Baron Howard of Effingham. Leicester, who deserted Lady Douglas Sheffield for Lettice Knollys, widow of the first earl of Essex, denied that they were married. She asserted that they, were, at Esher in Surrey, but her marriage with Sir Edward Stafford of Grafton, after her desertion, by Leicester, would seem to be a tacit confession that her claim had no foundation. Her son Robert was born in May 1573, was recognized by Leicester, and sent to Christ Church, Oxford, in 1587. He inherited all Leicesters property under the earls will at his death in 1588, and in the following year the property of Ambrose Dudley, earl of Warwick.

In 1594 he made a voyage to the West Indies, and in 1596 he took part in the expedition to Cadiz and was knighted. In 1592 he had married a sister of, Thomas Cavendish the circumnavigator. On her death he married Alicia Leigh in 1596, by whom he had tour daughters. After the death of Elizabeth he endeavoured to secure recognition of his legitimacy, and of his right to inherit the titles of his father and uncle. The proceedings were quashed by the Star Chamber.

In 1605 he obtained leave to travel abroad, and went to Italy accompanied by the beautiful Miss Elizabeth Southwell, daughter of Sir Robert Southwell of Woodrising, in the dress of a page. When ordered to return home and to provide for his deserted wife and family, he refused, was outlawed, and his property was confiscated. On the continent he avowed himself a Roman. Catholic, married Elizabeth Southwell at Lyons, and entered the service of Cosimo II, grand-duke of Tuscany. In the service of the grand-duke he is said to have done some fighting against the Barbary pirates, and he was undoubtedly employed in draining the marshes behind Leghorn, and in the construction of the port.

In 1620 the emperor Ferdinand II gave him a patent recognizing his claim not only to the earldom of Warwick but to the duchy of Northumberland, which had been held by his grandfather, who was executed by Queen Mary Tudor. In Italy Dudley was known as Duca di Nortombria and Conte di Warwick. lie died near Florence on the 6th of September 1649, leaving a large family of sons and daughters. His deserted wife, Alicia, was created duchess of Dudley by Charles I in 1644, and died in 1670, when the title became extinct. Through a daughter who married the Marquis Paleotti, Dudley was the ancestor of the wife of the first duke of Shrewsbury (of the revolution of 1688), and of her brother who was executed at Tyburn for murder on the 17th of March 1718. Dudley was the author of a pamphlet addressed to King James I, showing how the impertinences of parliament could be bridled by military force. But his chief claim to memory is the magnificent Arcano deli mare, published in Italian at Florence in 1645:1646 in a three volumes folio. It is a collection of all the naval knowledge of the age, and is particularly remarkable for a scheme for the construction of a navy in five rates which Dudley designed and described. It was reprinted in Florence in two volumes folio in 1661 without the charts of the first edition.

External Links

the 1911 encyclopedia